VoIP Gateways

Michael Coffee is pretty excited about Commetrex (News - Alert) and the Smart ATA of its sister company, NetGen Communications.

“I moved from engineering to marketing over 25 years ago, so I have an informed perspective,” the Commetrex CEO/COB wrote in a blog post earlier this year. “And I can say this: I have never marketed a product with a sales proposition that is received with the enthusiasm that Smart ATA’s proposition is received. It’s just amazing.”

He spoke with TMCnet in January at ITEXPO (News - Alert) Miami and explained why he is so hot on NetGen’s Smart ATA.

“Smart ATA is a unique product without cheapening the word,” he said in the video interview. “Smart ATA is a full-function ATA, PSTN to IP gateway, and integrated access device. That doesn’t make it unique. What makes it unique is that it is equipped with Commetrex Smart FoIP.”

Commetrex Smart FoIP solves two of the most vexing problems that service providers experience with FoIP.

“What I am talking about is the late T.38 re-invite problem, which I won’t go into, but it is a biggie. And the PCM clock sync problem, another 30-minute geeky presentation,” he said. “But the important point is that making those two problems vanish—and Smart ATA does—improves fax success rates over FoIP by 10 to 20 percent. That’s huge!”

A 20-percent reduction in failure rates means a lot fewer trouble tickets, and a lot more customer satisfaction.

It also means more revenue for service providers because the subscriber no longer has to keep his/her old POTS line for fax. Instead, s/he can repurpose that revenue, and give it to service providers for additional SIP trunks.

“Smart ATA also is the only ATA that supports v.34, which is a fax modem that goes at twice the speed of any other, and we’ve also recently introduced what we call Smart ACS (News - Alert), which is an auto-configuration server that allows the service provider to cost-effectively service hundreds or even thousands of these products in the field automatically,” Coffee added.

Commetrex is also tending to those who don’t have the advantage of Smart ATA; the company offers FaxTap for SIP, which is an analysis tool for equipment OEMs, service providers and lawful intercept OEMs to analyze fax calls and get to the bottom of fax issues that are cutting down on fax success rates.

“Anyone who has used Wireshark to chase down FoIP problems knows that Wireshark can be challenged a little bit by fax,” Coffee said, referring to the industry-leading analysis tool.

The full interview with Michael Coffee (News - Alert) can be seen above.